Probably the most exciting piece of digital music news to come out of CES 2008 was that Napster was planning on offering its complete catalog of more than 6 million tracks in the unprotected MP3 format. Today, with the launch of version 4.5 of the software and store, that announcement becomes a reality. Although digital music stores such as eMusic, Amazon MP3, and even Napster itself already had MP3s on offer before this point, the collective catalogs of all three didn't even come near the volume of tracks you can find in the entire Napster library. This is a huge day for digital music, as all four major labels and thousands upon thousands of indies are represented in the store, and every track will be available at the standard 99-cent price point.
Napster's Web-based store with the online media player window open.
(Credit: Napster)
More good news is that Napster's Web-based store, which is all that is required for MP3 purchases and downloads, is compatible with every operating system. And--of course--the MP3s can be played on any MP3 player, portable video player, or music cell phone. Currently, 95 percent of the catalog is encoded at 256kbps, which is reasonably high-quality for an MP3, and each track comes with hi-res album art (at least 1,000x1,000-pixels). Although Napster has quite an international presence, the MP3 store will only be available to U.S. residents for the time being.
Napster will continue to offer its online and To Go subscription services for $12.95 or $14.95 per month, respectively. The music associated with a subscription will remain in the protected WMA format with the time-out capability. The company did make some improvements to its online interface. It now features a "liquid layout," which resizes everything within both the store and media player windows when you adjust the size of either window. Napster has also improved its download management system so that users can better view what has been purchased already and whether it was eve
I love finding good music mashups, and MusicMesh is definitely one of the better ones that I've come across lately.
You've got a lot to look at here: just type in your favorite artist's name and you'll be treated to a smattering of related albums plus what you're looking for, as well as YouTube vids, track listings, user reviews, Wikipedia entries, etc. I got pretty distracted following the related music suggestions; they seem to be pretty well thought out as compared to other music services that in my experience can put some pretty wild stuff together. Worth a look and a listen.- Wendy Boswell
Create music online using guitar, drum, bass and piano loops à la GarageBand with JamStudio. Each instrument comes with an impressive collection of loops, and you can build your song-adding instruments and loops-in (almost) any way you want, then save the results. JamStudio isn't for the professional musician by any means, but if you've ever wanted to toy around with music and loops without paying a dime, JamStudio is a good place to start.
Listen to your iTunes library from any web browser using Anywhere.FM, a slick webapp that hosts and streams your music with its web-based player. The Anywhere.FM beta is almost too good to be true right now, with free unlimited uploads and listens (but the service may charge in the future). Download a free Anywhere.FM iTunes uploader application that will detect your library and upload all your songs to Anywhere.FM for you.
share your views, get your own gnutella webpage loaded with features:<br /> - journals<br /> - web cams<br /> - send and receive messages<br /> - and stay informed!<br /> <br /> Gnutella是简单又方便的网络交换文件软件,提供另外一种更简单的交换文件方式给大家选择。理论上,只要所有连接网络的人都把文件分享出来,那么大家的需求就可以得到解决。不管你是想要图形文件、音乐甚至是食谱,只要有人分享该文件,我们就应该可以透过Gnutella找到。
discover, listen and buy music discussed on the best mp3 blogs<br /> <br /> The Hype Machine is an audio blog aggregator that tracks songs posted to the best/most popular music blogs on the internet.<br /> <br /> Aside from a slew of great music discovery features, one really cool feature is the integrated podcasting. Search for a favorite artist, click the big podcast button, and any time new music by that artist gets indexed by the Hype Machine, you'll automatically get it in your podcast subscription.
CMS Portal is a place where users can put their reviews about various things, like programs, games, movies, ..., then various devices like computer hardware components, etc.. Please read Portal Rules to find out what is allowed and what is forbidden to publish on this site.
An executive from social-music site Imeem told CNET News just days ago that the company would not be going through a round of layoffs.
Well, not quite.
Imeem's vice president of marketing, Matt Graves, said the question was actually "whether we had done layoffs, not whether we were going to," and that he answered accordingly. Sneaky! He proceeded to confirm a report from PaidContent that a quarter of the company has been laid off.
"There's not as much money floating around the market, and we had to cut our costs to accommodate," Graves said. He added that the layoffs are companywide--"finance, marketing, communications, product, technical operations"--clarifying the PaidContent assertion that the layoffs had been primarily "on the technical back-end side."
He would not comment on the other half of PaidContent's report--that Imeem is planning to shop itself to prospective buyers. PaidContent's Rafat Ali added that Imeem's projected valuation is more than $200 million, a figure that many media and technology companies might not be willing to fork over at this point.
Imeem has taken venture funding from Sequoia Capital, a firm that has advocated extreme caution and frugality amid financial panic. Another Sequoia-backed company, Jive Software, cut a third of its employees within days of the now-famous letter from the venture firm to its portfolio CEOs.